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HISTORY & TIMELINE
16 July

A journey through
16 July in history

The story of 16 July runs from the first day of the Islamic calendar in 622 to comet fragments striking Jupiter in 1994. In between come the excommunications of 1054, the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the Qing victory at Penghu, the premiere of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio, the La Paz uprising, the deposing of Iran’s shah, the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup in Paris, the Trinity test, the Maracanazo, Saddam Hussein’s rise to the presidency and the Luzon earthquake.

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JUMP THROUGH TIME
I
EARLIEST RECORDS

Ancient & Early History

The earliest worthwhile records and events connected with this date.

622
Inside the Prophet's Mosque in Medina, the city to which Muhammad migrated in 622Inside the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, the city to which Muhammad migrated in 622Image: بلال الدويك · CC BY-SA 3.0
culture · Middle East

The first day of the Islamic calendar

The Islamic calendar counts its years from the Hijrah, the Prophet Muhammad’s migration from Mecca to Medina in 622. The migration itself took place in September, but when the caliph Umar introduced the era in about 639 he fixed its start at the beginning of that lunar year, 1 Muharram. That day fell on Friday 16 July 622 in the Julian calendar. Because the Islamic year is lunar, about 11 days shorter than the solar year, its months move steadily through the seasons.

Source: Britannica: Hijrah ↗
II
THE MIDDLE AGES

Medieval History

Kingdoms, conflict, faith, power and the changing medieval world.

1054
Both sides of a lead seal of Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, with the Virgin on one face and a Greek inscription naming him on the otherBoth sides of a lead seal of Michael Cerularius, Patriarch of Constantinople, with the Virgin on one face and a Greek inscription naming him on the otherImage: Unknown Byzantine artist; photograph by Classical Numismatic Group (CNG) · CC BY-SA 2.5
culture · Europe

Papal envoys excommunicate the Patriarch of Constantinople

By the 11th century the Latin Church of the West and the Greek Church of the Byzantine East had drifted far apart. They argued over the wording of the Creed, over whether the bread of the Eucharist should be leavened, over married priests and, above all, over the Pope’s claim to authority over the whole Church. In 1054 Pope Leo IX sent a delegation to Constantinople led by the forceful Cardinal Humbert of Silva Candida, but talks with the Patriarch, Michael Cerularius, went nowhere, and the Pope died while his envoys were still in the city. On 16 July 1054 Humbert and his fellow legates walked into the great church of Hagia Sophia and laid a bull of excommunication against Cerularius on the altar. Cerularius replied by excommunicating the legates. At the time it looked like one more quarrel between churchmen, but the break was never healed, and 1054 became the traditional date for the split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. The mutual excommunications were lifted by Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras only in 1965.

Source: Britannica: Humbert of Silva Candida ↗
1212
The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, painted by Francisco de Paula Van Halen in 1864The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, painted by Francisco de Paula Van Halen in 1864Image: Francisco de Paula Van Halen · Public domain
world · Europe

The Christian kings of Spain rout the Almohads at Las Navas de Tolosa

In the late 12th century the Almohads, a Berber dynasty ruling from Marrakesh, held all of Muslim Spain, and in 1195 they had crushed King Alfonso VIII of Castile at Alarcos. Alfonso spent years preparing his revenge. Pope Innocent III proclaimed a crusade, and in 1212 the kings of Aragon and Navarre joined Castile with knights from Portugal and volunteers from beyond the Pyrenees. The Almohad caliph Muhammad al-Nasir brought a large army north to meet them in the passes of the Sierra Morena. The Muslim army held the main pass, but, as the story goes, a local shepherd showed the Christians another way through the mountains. On 16 July 1212 they attacked the caliph’s camp on the plain of Las Navas de Tolosa and routed his army, and al-Nasir fled to Africa. Alfonso went on to take Baeza and Úbeda. The victory removed the last great Muslim threat to the Christian kingdoms, and within forty years Castile had taken Córdoba and Seville.

Source: Britannica: Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa ↗
III
A CHANGING WORLD

Early Modern Era

Exploration, political change, scientific development and expanding global connections.

1683
A hand-drawn map of the Penghu Islands from the early Qing dynastyA hand-drawn map of the Penghu Islands from the early Qing dynastyImage: Unknown author (early Qing dynasty) · Public domain
world · Asia

The Qing navy wins the Battle of Penghu, opening the way to Taiwan

After Koxinga drove the Dutch from Taiwan in 1662, his family ruled the island as the last stronghold of Ming loyalists against the Qing dynasty. In July 1683 the Qing admiral Shi Lang, a former Zheng commander, attacked the Penghu Islands in the Taiwan Strait. On 16 July, after hours of fighting, his fleet destroyed some 200 Zheng ships, and their commander Liu Guoxuan fled to Taiwan. The Zheng court surrendered that autumn, and Taiwan became part of the Qing empire.

Source: National Museum of Taiwan History: The battle in Penghu in 1683 ↗
1782
The playbill for the first performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail by the imperial National-Singspiel company in Vienna, 1782The playbill for the first performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail by the imperial National-Singspiel company in Vienna, 1782Image: Unknown author · Public domain
culture · Europe

Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio opens in Vienna

In 1781 the 25-year-old Mozart broke with his employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg, and settled in Vienna to make his living as a freelance musician. The Emperor Joseph II had set up a company to perform opera in German rather than Italian, and it commissioned from Mozart a Singspiel, a comic opera with spoken dialogue, to a libretto by Gottlieb Stephanie. Its story, of a Spanish nobleman trying to rescue his beloved from the palace of a Turkish pasha, played on the Viennese taste for all things Turkish. Die Entführung aus dem Serail had its premiere at the Burgtheater on 16 July 1782 and was a great success, with Mozart’s ‘Turkish’ music of cymbals, triangle and drum delighting audiences. A later story has the emperor complaining of ‘too many notes’. Within weeks Mozart married Constanze Weber, who shared her name with the opera’s heroine, and it became one of the most often performed of his operas in his lifetime.

Source: Glyndebourne: Die Entführung aus dem Serail, history ↗
IV
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The 1800s

Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.

1809
Pedro Domingo Murillo, leader of the La Paz rising, holding a torch above the city in a portrait by Joaquín PintoPedro Domingo Murillo, leader of the La Paz rising, holding a torch above the city in a portrait by Joaquín PintoImage: Joaquin Pinto · Public domain
politics · Americas

La Paz rises against Spanish rule

When Napoleon forced the Spanish king Ferdinand VII from his throne in 1808, Spain’s American empire was thrown into confusion. Colonial officials no longer knew whose authority they served, and in city after city Creole leaders, born in the Americas of Spanish descent, began to talk of governing themselves. In Upper Peru, the modern Bolivia, the town of Chuquisaca moved first in May 1809. On 16 July 1809, while the city of La Paz was busy with the procession of the Virgen del Carmen, rebels led by Pedro Domingo Murillo seized the barracks, rang the church bells and called the people to an open town council, which removed the governor and the bishop. Days later they set up a governing junta. The rising was crushed within months by troops sent from Peru, and Murillo was hanged in January 1810, but La Paz is remembered as one of the first sparks of the wars of independence in Spanish South America.

Source: Harvard Library, Latin American pamphlet collection: Revolución del 16 de julio de 1809 y biografía de don Pedro Domingo Murillo (1878) ↗
V
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1909
A commemorative picture of the constitutionalists' capture of Tehran in 1909, with crowds gathered around a building at its centreA commemorative picture of the constitutionalists’ capture of Tehran in 1909, with crowds gathered around a building at its centreImage: Unknown author · Public domain
politics · Middle East

Iran’s constitutionalists depose Mohammad Ali Shah

In 1906 a revolution forced the Qajar ruler of Iran to grant a constitution and an elected parliament, the Majles. His son Mohammad Ali Shah, who came to the throne in 1907, set out to undo it. In June 1908 his Cossack Brigade shelled the parliament building and many of the constitution’s leaders were arrested or killed. Resistance held out in Tabriz, and in 1909 armed constitutionalists marched on the capital from Gilan in the north and with Bakhtiari tribesmen from the south. They entered Tehran on 13 July 1909, and the shah took refuge in the Russian legation. On 16 July an emergency assembly of more than 300 members declared that he had forfeited the throne, and placed his 11-year-old son on it as Ahmad Shah, with a regent to rule for him. The restored parliament met again that autumn, but foreign pressure and internal quarrels kept the constitutional government weak, and Ahmad Shah was the last of the Qajar kings.

Source: Encyclopaedia Iranica: Constitutional Revolution, events ↗
1942
The memorial plaque on the site of the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris, recording the arrests of 16 and 17 July 1942The memorial plaque on the site of the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris, recording the arrests of 16 and 17 July 1942Image: Djampa · CC BY-SA 4.0
world · Europe

The Vel’ d’Hiv roundup of Jews in Paris

Before dawn on 16 July 1942, on orders agreed between the Vichy government and the German occupiers, French police began arresting Jewish families in Paris. Over two days about 13,000 people were seized. Some 7,000, among them nearly 4,000 children, were held for days in the Vélodrome d’Hiver cycling stadium with almost no food, water or sanitation, and most of those arrested were deported to Auschwitz. In 1995 President Jacques Chirac acknowledged France’s responsibility.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: The Vélodrome d’Hiver (Vél d’Hiv) roundup ↗
1945
The Trinity fireball rising over the New Mexico desert, 16 milliseconds after the detonationThe Trinity fireball rising over the New Mexico desert, 16 milliseconds after the detonationImage: Berlyn Brixner / Los Alamos National Laboratory · Public domain
science · Americas

The first atomic bomb is exploded in the New Mexico desert

The Manhattan Project had two routes to an atomic bomb. A weapon using uranium was simple enough that its designers were sure it would work, but one using plutonium needed a sphere of explosives to crush its core evenly, and that had to be tested. The site chosen was a stretch of the Alamogordo Bombing Range in New Mexico known as the Jornada del Muerto, and J. Robert Oppenheimer named the test Trinity, after a poem by John Donne. At 5.29am on 16 July 1945 the device, nicknamed the Gadget, was detonated on top of a 30-metre steel tower. It released energy equal to about 18,600 tonnes of TNT, vaporised the tower and fused the desert sand into a greenish glass. Observers miles away were knocked off their feet. Three weeks later a uranium bomb destroyed Hiroshima, and a plutonium bomb of the Trinity design destroyed Nagasaki.

Source: US Department of Energy: Trinity Site, world’s first nuclear explosion ↗
1950
Alcides Ghiggia's shot goes past the Brazilian goalkeeper Barbosa for Uruguay's winning goal at the Maracanã, 16 July 1950Alcides Ghiggia’s shot goes past the Brazilian goalkeeper Barbosa for Uruguay’s winning goal at the Maracanã, 16 July 1950Image: Unknown author · Public domain
sport · Americas

Uruguay silence the Maracanã to win the World Cup

The 1950 World Cup in Brazil had no final as such: the four group winners played each other in a final pool. Brazil went into the last match against Uruguay at the new Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro needing only a draw, having thrashed Sweden and Spain. The official crowd was 173,850, and many believe more than 200,000 were inside. Newspapers had already hailed Brazil as champions. Friaça gave Brazil the lead just after half-time on 16 July 1950. Then Uruguay’s right winger Alcides Ghiggia twice ran past his marker: first he crossed for Juan Schiaffino to equalise, and with 11 minutes left he shot past the goalkeeper Barbosa at his near post. Uruguay won 2-1 and took their second World Cup. The defeat, remembered in Brazil as the Maracanazo, became a national trauma, and Ghiggia later joked that only the Pope, Frank Sinatra and he had ever silenced the Maracanã.

Source: FIFA: Uruguay’s stunning upset of Brazil, 1950 ↗
1979
Saddam Hussein in an official portrait of 1979, the year he became presidentSaddam Hussein in an official portrait of 1979, the year he became presidentImage: INA (Iraqi News Agency) · Public domain
politics · Middle East

Saddam Hussein becomes president of Iraq

The Ba’ath Party seized power in Iraq in 1968, with Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr as president and his younger kinsman from Tikrit, Saddam Hussein, as his deputy. Through the 1970s Saddam built up the security services and the party machine, and by the end of the decade he was the real power in the country while the ailing Bakr remained its public face. On 16 July 1979 Bakr resigned, officially for reasons of health, and Saddam became president. Within days he summoned party leaders to a meeting at which alleged plotters were named and led out of the room, and 22 senior figures were executed. Saddam ruled Iraq for almost 24 years, taking it into war with Iran in 1980 and into Kuwait in 1990, until he was overthrown by the American-led invasion of 2003.

Source: Britannica: Saddam Hussein ↗
1990
A US Geological Survey map of the intensity of shaking across Luzon in the earthquake of 16 July 1990A US Geological Survey map of the intensity of shaking across Luzon in the earthquake of 16 July 1990Image: USGS · Public domain
world · Asia

A great earthquake strikes Luzon in the Philippines

On the afternoon of 16 July 1990 a magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck central Luzon, the Philippines’ largest island. It was caused by movement on the Philippine Fault and tore a rupture about 125 kilometres long across the land. The mountain city of Baguio was badly hit, with hotels and other buildings collapsing, and in Dagupan the waterlogged ground liquefied. According to the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology, 1,283 people died.

Source: PHIVOLCS: 1990 July 16 Ms 7.8 Luzon earthquake ↗
1994
Dark impact scars from the comet fragments in Jupiter's southern hemisphere, seen by the Hubble Space TelescopeDark impact scars from the comet fragments in Jupiter’s southern hemisphere, seen by the Hubble Space TelescopeImage: Hubble Space Telescope Comet Team and NASA · Public domain
science · Global

Fragments of a comet begin to strike Jupiter

In March 1993 Carolyn and Eugene Shoemaker and David Levy found a strange comet orbiting Jupiter, already torn by the planet’s gravity into a string of more than 20 fragments. Astronomers calculated that the pieces would hit Jupiter, and on 16 July 1994 the first struck, at about 60 kilometres a second. Over six days the impacts, watched by the Hubble Space Telescope and observatories worldwide, left dark scars in Jupiter’s clouds, some larger than the Earth. It was the first collision between bodies in the solar system ever observed.

Source: NASA Science: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 ↗
RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 16 July, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.

Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.

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